💡 This tutorial will show you how to build a simple seating chart without sections, which is suitable for most venues. If you have a venue with over 1,000 seats, we suggest you read our article: How to create a seating chart with sections.

To get started creating a seating chart for your reserved seating event, go to ‘Box office settings’ > ‘Manage’ > ‘Seating charts’.

Then click on ‘Create new seating chart’:

(Note: you can also reach this point by clicking on ‘Use seating chart’ from the ‘Create ticket types’ area when creating an event).

The seating chart editor will then appear in a pop-up. The first option is to decide if you want to make a chart without sections or with sections:

Generally speaking unless you have a large venue, opting for ‘Without sections’ should be a good fit for your needs.

You’ll then have the option to trace over a chart if you have a diagram of your venue set-up available to hand. This can be a digital image, which you can upload and then build your seating map on top of. If you don’t have one, you can just click ‘Skip’.

Now you’re in the seating chart editor (which will just be a blank drawing board for you to start from if you have not opted to upload an image):

Before we start to draw the chart, let’s introduce some key functionalities of the tool that you’ll be using to set-up your seating layout:

Your starting point for drawing your chart, this is how you add new rows / seats to your design. You can opt to draw a single row at a time, multiple rows at a time, or intertwined rows.

Use this to select seats for labeling. More on this below.

Use this to select a certain selection of seats, e.g. to delete them or mark them as ‘Restricted view’, ‘Accessible’ or ‘Disabled by social distancing rules’.

Let’s use the example of a small venue, where there are 100 reserved seats available, in a standard row set up with an aisle in the middle.

1) Click on the Row tool, and choose ‘Multiple rows’:

Click your mouse where you want to start drawing and then release it to add new rows, click again to stop creating new rows:

To allow for an aisle, in this example we’ve created two separate blocks:

2) Next we need to label and categorize them. To do this, use the ‘Select tool’:

And drag across the area of seating to select the first block on the left:

3) This will open up the Row, Label and Category settings on the right hand side:

For this simple example, we’ll leave the ‘Row’ settings at the top as they are, and leave out Section labeling for now.

The first thing we’ll update is the ‘Row labeling’ – this is where you decide the name for each row, e.g. A,B,C or 1,2,3 depending on your preference. Use the ‘Position’ setting to determine which side you’d like the Row letter to display (leave it unselected if you don’t want it to show). There are other settings available in this section, but we’ll stick with keeping it as simple as A,B,C for this example (you might find the seats all turn red at this stage, but don’t worry we address that in the next step).

Then, under ‘Seat labeling’, you can choose your Sequence, e.g. 1,2,3. Once you select that, you’ll see the seats all turn white and are numbered:

💡 To prevent errors, ensure each seat has a unique label.

Finally, and this is a key step, we have to set the category. Categories are used for associating the seats on your seating charts to the ticket types you will be selling for your event. Think of a category as a collection of seats that have the same attributes and/or price. The names you chose for your categories will show on the seat chart where customers place their orders, so make sure they accurately describe what is for sale. For example, in a larger venue, you might have a ‘Stalls’ category and an ‘Upper circle’ category. Or, you might want to use it to designate accessible seats.

Click on ‘Create a new category’ and give it a name – this name could be the same or similar to what your ticket types will be called. For example, if all seats will be sold at the same price, you might simply call it ‘Reserved seating’, or you might want the front four rows to be priced higher, and call categorise them as ‘Front rows’. Once you have entered the name, click the checkmark next to it to save it.

Then, to apply it to the chart you must click on the newly created category to apply it to the selection, you’ll know it’s been applied because a checkmark will appear to the left and the seats will change colour to match the category:

4) We then need to repeat the process for the remaining unlabelled seats. Once you have selected them, in this example, we’ll set the Row label sequence as A,B,C again. Then for the Seat Labeling, we’ll select 1,2,3 again but this time we’ll need to have the row start at ‘6’ to avoid having duplicates (otherwise we’d have two A1s, two A2s etc).

Make sure you then apply the category (you can use the same one if it’s going to be under the same ticket type when you put the event on sale) by clicking on it as before.

Once that’s done, come out of the selector mode by clicking anywhere on the white space and you can then see on the right hand side if there are any errors or seats that are missing labels, if everything is green you’re all set!

5) Give your chart a title, on the top left, and then you can exit out of the tool by clicking the red ‘X’ on the top right – don’t worry, everything will have automatically saved.

6) You should then see your seating chart in the ‘Manage seating charts’ list.

If you would like to apply social distancing rulesets to your event, please see this article about how to set this up.

7) Now you are ready to build your event and add in your seating chart. Go to ‘Events’ > ‘Add a new event’. Add the main details of your event, and then under ‘Create ticket types’, click on ‘Use seating chart’ on the right hand side:

Select the seating chart and click ‘Save settings’

8) Click on the new ‘Add seated ticket type’ button that will now appear in the ‘Create ticket types’ section:

9) Enter your ‘Ticket name’, ‘Price’ and ‘Quantity’ – note that the quantity must be at least the number of seats available under the categories selected in your chart. Then select your seating chart and click ‘Save ticket’:

10) Save your event, and then either preview it to check you are happy, or publish it. Here’s what it will look like from the customers perspective:

There are loads more options and settings to work with your bespoke seating set up – we’ll be adding more articles and training documentation soon. In the meantime, you can reach our customer support team any time at hi@tickettailor.com.